


mistaken identity

by Antartique



Series: Forever incomplete AUs [1]
Category: Digimon Xros Wars | Digimon Fusion
Genre: Gen, Ryouma is a virus, and that is it thats the plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-30
Updated: 2015-10-30
Packaged: 2018-04-28 22:59:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5108753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Antartique/pseuds/Antartique
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"What about Ryouma-"</p>
<p>"You do not understand, there is no such thing as <i>Mogami Ryouma</i>."</p>
            </blockquote>





	mistaken identity

Astamon's first memories of Mogami Ryouma were hazy, covered in a light green mist even while resting inside his mind -his data, his very composition, tainted by _green_ and white and Ryouma. Whenever he tried to bring them up -talk about them, whisper about them to anyone else who wasn't Ryouma-, the pale mist would take over his thoughts, sending him into a confused state of drowsiness and _need_.

He often found his worth and self respect fading away whenever that happened. His mind, his memories, held in the grasp of one dangerous and powerful creature, only to be recognized when said creature wanted them.

However, he didn't mind. Not as much as he did in the beginning, at least, since it was impossible to believe him, proud Prince of vanity and sloth, would simply give up to the thought of submission.

Ryouma, curled up besides him, breaths a sigh and furrows deeper under the blankets, his small hand tightening its hold on the digimon. As if sensing Astamon's thoughts about the very being who hid under the human skin and human likeness.

And Astamon could do nothing else but bring him closer, wrapping his being around the small piece of humanized data.

He was probably not the only one who realized it, though. Data was data, after all. No matter how perfectly molded and coded to look and act like any other human being.

He still remembered, clearly, how Ryouma looked in that void space between realities: pale, trembling, green eyes glowing in hunger and despair and _weakness_ that shouldn't be there, and hadn't been there ever again. Almost vanishing in the white background, completely unseen, gaze fixed in the group of humans and digimon who gathered behind the window to the other realm.

_Are you the one who answered my call?_

His second meeting with Ryouma was a few days later, in the human world, when the inhuman boy ran into him, eyes wide and scared, a green device in the hand that looked normal but was not.

The DigiQuartz opened under them and swallowed them whole.

_What are you?_

Nowadays, he had stopped caring about anything related to Ryouma's other self -true self, the real identity hidden carefully behind layers and layers of lies. He had stopped caring about many things, from his land to his people, to his purpose in the world. His only business was Ryouma, Ryouma's human self and Ryouma's game of cat and mouse.

The prince became a subject, and he didn't care at all.

The thing hiding under Ryouma's devious smiles, his quiet laughs, his victory cries; wouldn't have it any other way.

* * *

Astamon watches from up a tree as the three friends bid their good byes to each other. Ren is groaning into his hands, Airu giggling next to him while Ryouma smiles, hand already up for a small wave.

"When I run away from home," Ren was saying, before, "I'm gonna follow you until you reveal your house to us."

"That just makes me think you are so deeply in love you will stalk us to the ends of the world~" Airu had responded, punching his arm lightly, a chance distraction from Ryouma's blank and faraway eyes.

He liked watching Ryouma interact with those two, even if he had to constantly be watching over any kind of dangerous slip ups -Ryouma blanked out whenever anything related to humanity was mentioned, and Astamon had made it his duty to pull him out of dangerous situations. As perfect as Ryouma's programming was, he still didn't quite understand some of the deeper parts of human psyche, which lead to some really weird conversations between the three friends in the past.

(" _Is it weird I do not go to this_... School?" Ryouma had asked, one day, after leaving his friends outside the big building at the end of their lunch break. Astamon had just laughed, a little, because Digimon didn't really have schools, so it wasn't that weird to imagine Ryouma forgetting to code human rituals into himself.)

He tries hard not to laugh at Ryouma's lost eyes when he wanders back to the tree, hands already reaching up for Astamon to lift him up. He does so, enjoying the feel of the small, data-made hands burying into his hair and Ryouma's breath ghosting past his neck when they fly into the sky.

"Astamon?"

"Hm?" He hums a question, looking around for a comfortable place in the DigiQuartz for them to spend the night. The tower is overused, as is the digital projection of Kudou Taiki's house, so he settles for flying wide circles around and land anywhere.

"Do you mind us not having a... home?" The question comes after a few minutes, after Ryouma subtly guides them to a barren, digital music school. "A place to call our own?"

He thinks on the question, remembering the great halls of his old castle and the cold, empty feeling of his 'childhood' nest. As he lands past the broken roof and carefully puts Ryouma down on the floor, he catches a glimpse of confused inhuman green eyes and smiles to the fake boy.

"It would be easier to arrange bed times," _not that we really need sleep_ , he adds mentally. He ignores Ryouma's flinch when he drops his hand on his head, petting the small human's hair like he has done many times before. "But this constant camping is fun, and really, home is where you are."

Ryouma beams, his eyes going back to their human disguise, and Astamon wants to hug him, this little child he has been with for only half a year, but feels like eternity. Instead, he grins back and goes to rummage through their bag of trinkets and supplies in search for their blankets.

They have made it so far like this. They can continue like this.

* * *

Looking back the last few days, maybe Ryouma should have expected something like this to happen. Later, if not sooner, and maybe if he had trusted his human side a little more (which he didn't, really, have; it was just a bunch of codes that covered his real self, with a few more to be _socially acceptable_ ) he could have evaded this would situation without any trouble.

Thinking about it is not stopping Ren from staring at him, XrosLoader still held high from when he had freed Ryouma from his minute-long prison. His expression is passive, eyes narrowed with a glint of interest behind heavy lashes, and he was just starting to lower the device and open his mouth when Ryouma turns and _flees._

"Wait!" Ren's voice comes from behind him, but he cares not. His supposed _best friend_ for the past eleven months was not meant to know, is not meant to follow.

Ryouma steps into the DigiQuartz, letting the small fragments of data wrap around him for a vague sense of comfort. Astamon is already at his side, reaching to wrap his arm around him, and Ryouma feels pathetic.

There is something wet in his eyes. He wonders if it can rain in the DigiQuartz.

"I saw," Astamon whispers, bringing him closer, and Ryouma wraps his whole invisible self around the digimon, letting his human body limp on his arms. "I'm sorry I couldn't do anything."

"It is alright," he says a few minutes later, when his consciousness resets inside his human-like vessel. It is a prison, but it feels more comfortable than the white space inside Ren's Loader; at least in the body of Mogami Ryouma, he doesn't feel like his data is breaking apart each second, struggling to keep himself in check. "It would have happened later, anyways."

At least now he knows the internal workings of the XrosLoader, so he settles down on Astamon's caring hold to work on fixing his own fake, green device.

While the DigiQuartz conceals them in a space past human and digital sight, Astamon throws a blanket atop them both. Ryouma curls up closer to the digimon -his digimon-, ignoring the heavy feeling in his unbeating heart, or the conflicting streams of data that tell him to give up.

He slipped in front of Ren, and now Ren knows. Who knows when any of the other Hunters will realize as well.

* * *

It had been three days since he had _captured_ Mogami Ryouma into his XrosLoader. Three days since he has last seen his (fake) best friend or his (its?) Digimon wandering around, three whole days since he last stepped into the DigiQuartz only to find Ryouma already waiting with a small smile and mischievous eyes.

It has also been three days since his XrosLoader stopped working.

Tobari Ren hit the device weakly against his hand, trying to make the static in the screen fade at least a little more than just the corners. The static is like fog, clinging heavily to the screen and anything it touches, and Ren is glad -relieved, really- that Dracmon wasn't inside the device when the slip happened.

The Digimon tells him to take it to the old man, since it clearly needs fixing, but Ren knows that doing so will bring more trouble than it is worth. And so he leans back on his bed, Dracmon sitting on his lap waving a pencil case around for the noise, and keeps his eyes on the XrosLoader and the data it displays.

**ERROR** , it says, past the grainy texture of the static. The words fade in and out of existence, like Ryouma's mind tends to wander every few minutes. **ERROR** , it says, and it will continue saying unless he finds a way to fix it without asking anyone else, because he is not stupid, and neither is Airu.

**ERROR** , it says, just like their phones do whenever Ryouma calls, their devices unable to pick up a proper signal or an origin number, the boy's voice coming out clearer than it does when meeting face to face. **ERROR** , **ERROR**.

He busted a few computers at school trying to connect the XrosLoader like he used to do (the device had a lot of hidden functions, like the database, which he had wanted to access to see what Ryouma was and how he got in his XrosLoader), and he wouldn't risk his parents' wrath by also busting the only computer at home. He could go to Airu, because she _would_ understand, but she tended to run her mouth about Ryouma-related things a little too much.

He sighs and grabs his phone, sorting through the registry to find the corrupted string of numbers and symbols that is, apparently, Ryouma's latest phone, and calls. Really, Ryouma should know they aren't stupid, though Airu keeps believing he uses a heavily encrypted network instead of being _in_ the network itself.

There is no ring tone. Only a quiet murmur of a dozen voices and static, static and voices, until his best friend's voice breaks past them with a broken greeting.

* * *

Dracmon finds Ryouma and Astamon high up in a digitalized lighthouse.

The DigiQuartz has an ocean, closely equivalent to the Human World's one, but the water is sick and greenish, with bits of data fading in and out of existence instead of waves. There is a small island, with a tall, towering lighthouse that emits red light from all windows instead of just the top.

The tower has no equivalent in the Human World, and Ren wonders if this is where Ryouma's lives.

"Hey, Dataman," he calls after knocking twice on the lighthouse's top door. Dracmon runs past him and jumps on Astamon, starting to tell the tale of yesterday's hunt, which was the best and not interrupted by Akashi Tagiru, so I'll tell you everything. Ren grins at the two and mentally thanks his partner for distracting the Digimon as he goes to sit next to his friend.

"My name is Ryouma," he says, or murmurs, his voice lilting up as if asking a question. His own XrosLoader -apparently, no more than a green box that doesn't do much- is in his hands, hands which seem to fade from code, to human, to small white claws in the span of a millisecond. " _Dataman_ makes me sound like some-"

"Super hero?" Ren leans a little to look at his friend's face and his smile widens. Ryouma looks troubled, but amused, half serious and half joking, and _this_ was the Ryouma that belonged to Ren and Airu -not the blank faced one who fled when confronted with questions or mentions to a family he doesn't have.

"-which I am not, so I would ask you to use my designation instead of a name made up on the spot." His words are like a string of code, coming out like practiced, becoming flat midways through the sentence into an absolute monotone. Unnerving, yes, but not something Ren can't deal with. "We- I respond to either Mogami Ryouma or-," and here his words become unintelligible, like nails scratching a blackboard along with TV static.

"Ryouma is fine." His answer is followed by Ryouma's eyes becoming more human, less fake; a little smile, and Ren smiles and reaches to wrap an arm around his friend.

They sit there for a few minutes, watching Astamon chase Dracmon for some or other reason, in complete silence. Ren wants to ask, to know about everything, but the quiet hum of the DigiQuartz is the same quiet hum of Ryouma's voice in their late night phone calls, and he finds himself relaxing.

(The DigiQuartz circles around Ryouma, and Ren was too late to realize that.)

"I am sorry," Ryouma says, his diction too perfect to be natural, his body to still to be alive, "about your XrosLoader."

Well, of course, that was also a thing he had come here for. He takes the device out, holding it for his friend to take, and speaks. "I don't care as long as you can fix it."

His collection is back to zero -one-, but he doesn't care as long as he is still in the game. Which he is, so it's okay, and even if Ryouma's hands tremble a little when taking the XrosLoader he will still think it's okay.

Ryouma is okay. They are just fine.

* * *

"Remnant data?"

"Yes. We- I am fragments of Digimon data which didn't make it back to the DigiWorld after a certain incident."

"So, you are like, leftovers no one wanted."

"You could say that. The incident _was_ quite disruptive to the structural code of the DigiWorld, so there is a little-"

"Yeah, yeah, okay Mr. Robot, I get it. What incident are we talking about."

"..."

"It happened two years ago. Maybe you were there."

"Hi, Astamon- Oh, that thing with the portal in the middle of the city?"

"That one-"

"Wait, wait, wait! You are _two years old_."

"Ren."

"Two years old!"

"Stop."


End file.
